Playing the Part
by Vardy
Summary: A song-fic inspired by "Camera One" that chronicles the lives of two members of the Pod Squad post-Departure


Playing the Part   
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Roswell. I don't own the song "Camera One." I don't own   
anything.  
Author's Note: For some reason, this song has always screamed Kyle and Isabel to me.   
I'm a stargazer until the end, though, so expect some surprises. This one's for Darth, who   
convinced me to post it.  
  
Kyle  
//The sandy-haired son of Hollywood  
Lost his faith in all that's good//  
  
When Tess left, when we found out what she did…I lost my faith in everything that was   
good. Nothing made sense anymore. Tess? Evil? A murderer? It just didn't make sense.   
Tess was the girl who made strawberry and Tabasco waffles on Sunday mornings and   
teased me about secretly wanting to be an alien. I told her I thought of her as a sister…but I   
think we both knew I was lying through my teeth.   
  
I think we both knew I loved her enough to let her go.  
  
I let her go, and all hell broke loose.   
  
If I could turn back time, just for one moment, that would the moment I'd choose. That   
moment in the eraser room, at the prom. She was wearing this purple dress she was so   
excited about…I remember Isabel whispered to me that Tess had dragged her to six   
different stores looking for the thing. Tess said she wanted a normal, human experience for   
once in her life.  
  
I would give that to her, if I could. I would give her anything. Instead of lying to her, like I   
did that night, I would tell her the truth, even if I knew she'd never feel the same way about   
me. I would let her trample on my heart if she wanted to, and I would smile while she did it.   
  
If I could turn back time, I would take her in my arms and kiss her and make her realize that   
I loved her. Make her realize that she could be good.  
  
But I didn't.  
  
//Closed the curtain, unplugged the clock  
Hung his clothes on the shower rod  
But he never got undressed and no he never made a mess//  
  
After I found out the truth, I was in a daze. Maria dropped me off at home, and I wandered   
inside. Dad took one look at me and asked me what was wrong.   
  
I just shook my head. I couldn't say it aloud, because that would make it real.  
  
I wandered into her room…now my room again, I realized, and pulled the curtains shut. I   
didn't want to see the early-morning sunlight. Didn't the world realize that my world had   
fallen apart? Didn't anyone care? It should be raining, pouring…but the sun still shone.  
  
I stared around the darkened room, stared at the little glowing numbers on the clock and   
watched the minutes tick by until that, too, seemed oppressive. I was suffocating, I realized,   
as I yanked the clock out of the wall and threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a   
satisfying thunk and shattered into a million little pieces.  
  
It reminded me of my heart.  
  
The walls seemed to close in. I looked around, and all I could see were her things, nothing   
of mine. I swallowed a sob and practically ran out of the room.  
  
I passed Dad in the hall, and his eyes looked so empty that I knew he knew. Vaguely, I   
wondered who told him. Max? Michael? Isabel?   
  
No, not Isabel. She was practically catatonic.  
  
Hell, so am I.  
  
I made it to the bathroom, and slammed the door. I looked at myself in the mirror, and all I   
could remember was the last time I'd looked in a mirror. I'd seen Alex die.  
  
I forced myself to look away from the bleakness I saw in my own eyes and instead study my   
clothes, examine the fabric, the colour.   
  
Tess loved this shirt.  
  
I pulled it off and tossed it over the shower rod. But I didn't get undressed, and I didn't   
turn on the shower. I just slid down along the wall until I was sitting on the floor. I pulled   
my knees up to my chest and I cried.  
  
Funny thing was, I didn't know who I was crying for. Alex, Isabel, Tess…or me.  
  
//It's funny how life turns out  
The odds of faith in the face of doubt//  
  
It's been seven years. Seven years since Alex died. Seven years since I dragged his body   
through the house and tossed it in the car like a piece of luggage. Seven years since my   
heart shattered.  
  
Seven years since Tess left me.  
  
I married Isabel a few months ago. I love her, sure…but not the way I loved Tess. Never   
the way I loved Tess. We both know it's not the real thing. We both know we're still too   
in love with others to ever love each other as anything more than friends. We both know we   
were just too damn lonely to go through another day alone and turned to each other out of   
desperation.  
  
But I'm not afraid to admit it. I like waking up next to her every morning. Because when I   
wake up and see long blonde hair on the pillow, for a few minutes, before I'm fully awake, I   
can pretend the girl lying next to me has bouncy blonde ringlets.  
  
And then I fully wake up, and start to play the game.  
  
//Camera one closes in  
The soundtrack starts, the scene begins.//  
  
Isabel and I…we pretend. We go through the motions for everyone. We smile, we laugh,   
we kiss, we pretend we give a damn if the world spins around for another day. We make   
our friends and our family think we're happy.  
  
We're not. We're just damn good actors.   
  
Sometimes, I feel like I'm living in a never-ending movie. Sometimes, I don't care. And   
then sometimes, like today, I just wish that someone would roll the closing credits and I   
could drop the pretence altogether.  
  
//You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
Take a bow  
Take a bow//  
  
Isabel  
  
//The trophy wife of Palisades  
Whose yearbook beauty never fades//  
  
I've been married to Kyle for nearly a year now. But he doesn't remember insignificant   
things like our first wedding anniversary. That's something another man would've done. I   
know it's wrong, I know it's horrible. But sometimes, I can't help but resent Kyle because   
he isn't Alex.  
  
It's not Kyle's fault that I'll never love him as anything more than a friend. Just like it's not   
my fault that he'll never love me liked he loved her.   
  
But loving them…Alex is dead, and Tess is as good as dead to us. We're still alive. We   
still have to live, still have to carry on, no matter how much it hurts. No matter how much I   
want to curl up in a corner and pretend the world stopped the day my heart stopped   
beating, I can't. I owe it to him, to Alex, to live life for both of us.  
  
That's partly why I said yes when Kyle proposed. I promised myself I would keep going   
on, keep moving forward, for Alex, if not for me. But I had a more selfish reason. I said   
yes because I thought I would go crazy if Liz or Maria tried to set me up with one more   
blind date. Because I thought I would scream if Max or Michael asked me if there was a   
man in my life.   
  
Kyle understood. I know, because he felt the same way.   
  
I spend a lot of time staring at my old yearbooks. I look at the girl I used to be, and I look   
in the mirror, but I don't recognize the face staring back at me. It's the same face, but it   
shouldn't be. I'm different now. I don't feel comfortable in my own skin anymore. My   
face should be different, too, but it's not.  
  
I know Kyle pretends I'm her sometimes. And maybe it's wrong of him, but if it gives him   
even a moment of peace, I don't care. I know he doesn't love me, not the way he loved   
her. And it doesn't bother me in the least, because I don't love him that way, either. I   
know I'm just his friend, not his love…I'm just the girl Kyle's boss has nicknamed 'the   
ultimate trophy' and reminds him to treat right.   
  
Kyle's boss is right, in a way. I am the ultimate trophy. I look good on my husband's arm.   
We go to all the right parties, we're seen with all the right people.  
  
Maybe, seven years ago, when I was that other girl, that girl who loved a boy named Alex   
Whitman, I actually would've cared.  
  
I think that's the saddest part about all of it. I just don't care anymore.  
  
I know his boss only thinks I'm a trophy because of my body and my face. It doesn't   
matter to me, though, because I'm not the wife my husband wants. Kyle loved another   
blonde girl, once upon a time. He wants her, not me. And I don't care. He loved her, and   
wants her, because she's the one he loved.  
  
Just liked I loved another dark-haired boy.  
  
//Sits and watches the sea fold in  
And wonders what might have been  
If she could ever have the chance would she do it all again?//  
  
We went to the beach for our honeymoon. Our friends would be shocked if they knew   
Kyle slept on the floor for the first three nights, but they have happy little lives full of   
rainbows and hearts. Full of love, real love, instead of bitterness and anger and loneliness.  
  
When he fell asleep, I snuck outside and sat at the edge of the water and watched the tide   
roll in. I stared up at the stars as I cried and wondered what my life would have been like if   
Alex had never died. What my honeymoon would've been like if the man I really loved was   
sleeping in our room.  
  
After the third night, I resolved never to wonder and wish and dream again. That was the   
night I told Kyle we could share our bed.  
  
It's been almost a year, and some nights, as I listen to him snore softly beside me, I stare out   
at the night sky and break my promise. I wonder if I could go back in time, back to the   
night I put all my childish dreams of everlasting love and princes rescuing the damsel in   
distress aside – back to the night when I put all my dreams of Alex aside – if I would do it   
all again.  
  
The thing that scares me the most is that I just don't know.  
  
//It's funny how life turns out  
The odds of faith in the face of doubt//  
  
I never thought my life would be like this when I was eighteen. I never thought I would live   
a charade. I never thought my whole existence would be a lie.  
  
I'm going to have a baby in two months, Kyle's daughter or son, and all I can do is wish my   
baby's father was Alex.  
  
I'm an accomplished attorney, but I'm on autopilot...I don't feel for the people I help, I just   
do my job and wipe my hands of it when it's finished.  
  
I'm married to my best friend, and I have to remind myself not to pretend he's another man.  
  
That morning – the morning Tess left, the morning we learned she killed Alex - after Max   
and I got home, I snuck out. I ran to the cemetery and I knelt beside Alex's grave. And I   
cried.  
  
I cried for Alex, for Kyle…and for me. I cried for hours, cried for my lost love, cried for   
the by who would have to live with the memory of what he'd helped Tess do to his best   
friend, cried for the girl I was when I was with Alex, the girl I knew I would never be again.  
  
And then I wiped my tears away. I haven't cried since.  
  
//Camera one closes in  
The soundtrack starts, the scene begins//  
  
Kyle and I…we pretend. We go through the motions for everyone. We smile, we laugh,   
we kiss, we pretend we give a damn if the world spins around for another day. We make   
our friends and our family think we're happy.  
  
We're not. We're just damn good actors.   
  
Sometimes, I feel like I'm living in a never-ending movie. Sometimes, I don't care. And   
then sometimes, like today, I just wish that someone would roll the closing credits and I   
could drop the pretence altogether.  
  
//You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
Take a bow  
Take a bow//  
  
Kyle  
  
//On the corner by the street  
He sits in his lawn chair in the heat//  
  
I'm a father now. I have a daughter named Alexandra Diane.   
  
I call her Lexi.  
  
She's nearly five years old, and she's my entire world. I spend a lot of my time just   
watching her grow up. I promised myself, a long time ago, that I wouldn't be the kind of   
absent Dad that my own father was. I'm there, every day. I sit on my lawn chair and watch   
her ride her bike – a bicycle I helped her learn to ride. I helped her build a lemonade stand   
on the hottest day of summer last week and watched with pride as she made her first sale. I   
think she'll be a savvy businesswoman one day.  
  
//Sightseers see what they want  
He's selling star maps to the sun//  
  
Liz and Maria, Max and Michael…they all think I'm perfectly happy. They all think I'm   
over her. Tess.   
  
I'm not.  
  
They don't know much about me. They don't know that sometimes, I look at my   
daughter's shiny blonde hair and wonder what if. What if she had springy blonde ringlets   
instead of straight locks? What if she was Tess' little girl?  
  
But Liz, Maria, Michael and Max don't want to see that. They just want to think of her as a   
distant memory. Sometimes, I do, too.  
  
Then, other days, days like today…I miss her so much my heart screams for her.  
  
Telling them that would be a waste of breath. They just wouldn't understand how I still love   
her, even after all she's done. But isn't that what love is? They say love is blind. I'm not   
blind; I see her for what she is. I know what she's done is wrong, and I don't excuse what   
she's done.   
  
I just love her anyway.  
  
//The sandy-haired son of Hollywood  
Lost his faith in all that's good//  
  
Isabel died two years ago. In a car accident, of all things. The universe's idea of a damn   
funny joke, I guess. It's sad, but sometimes, I envy her. Because she's finally happy. I was   
there, in those last hazy, pain-filled minutes. She knew she was about to die, and she was   
smiling. She was smiling that beautiful smile I haven't seen in over a decade, not since she   
smiled at Alex at that damn prom, where all this hell began. I told her not to leave me, not   
to leave our daughter, and she smiled. Her eyes were foggy and unfocused, but she looked   
over my shoulder, and whispered his name. Alex. And then she managed to pull her eyes   
back to me and told me to take care of our daughter, to keep her safe…to make her   
understand that her mommy was finally happy.  
  
And then Isabel, my best friend, shuddered and died. She died quietly, calmly, the same   
way she lived her life.  
  
So now the only good thing, the only light in my life, is my daughter. A little girl that looks   
like a miniature version of her mother, except with my father's and my trademark eyes.  
  
I can't make life perfect for my daughter. Hell, I can barely make it tolerable for myself. All   
I can hope is that she won't repeat the mistakes her mother and I made.  
  
//Closed the curtain, unplugged the clock  
Hung his clothes on the shower rod  
But he didn't get undressed and no he didn't seem depressed//  
  
My daughter's almost grown up now. She's eighteen, the same age we were when our   
worlds collapsed down around us. And I've kept my promise. She's happy and safe and   
she knows she's loved.   
  
It's the day before my forty-third birthday. It's the anniversary of the day my life fell apart.  
  
Lexi's gone out with friends, probably stirring up trouble and pulling pranks worthy of her   
parents and her namesake, and I'm here, alone. I stared at the photo that still sits on our   
mantle, even after all these years…that picture of all of us, before prom. We were so   
young, so happy…so damn innocent. Such fools…unaware our world was teetering on the   
edge of collapse. That in a few days time, our lives would change and never be the same   
again.  
  
Maria and Michael…they're the only ones who really came out of everything unscathed.   
They're happy, with their houseful of noisy, boisterous kids.  
  
Max and Liz…he still misses the son he lost and Liz's heart still yearns for revenge. Neither   
of them really see the kids they have, the son and daughter forced to grow up in the shadow   
of a nameless boy on a faraway planet but is more real to their parents than they are.  
  
Isabel and Alex…they're both long dead, but they, like Maria and Michael, are happy.   
They're together in death, the way they should've been in life.  
  
Tess…I don't feel her anymore. I don't feel that presence in the back of my mind, that   
awareness that she was alive and well and miserable anymore. She's waiting for me now,   
with Alex and Isabel.  
  
And me? Am I happy? Yes and no. My daughter is my reason to get out of bed every   
morning, and she is my pride and joy. She makes me smile, a thing I thought impossible   
after so many years of anguish and pain, but my little girl does it, nonetheless.  
  
I'm not happy, though. I won't be, until I'm with them all again. Tess, Isabel and Alex.  
  
I glanced at the clock, saw that it was only a few seconds before midnight. I pulled the plug   
from the wall, the same way I do every year. All the other clocks in the house were already   
stopped. In my house, midnight never comes, and the anniversary of the worst day of my   
life doesn't end.  
  
And like I always do at this time, whether Lexi's home or not, I stumble into the bathroom   
and stare into the mirror and remember them. All three of them.  
  
Then I cry.  
  
//It's funny how life turns out  
The odds of faith in the face of doubt//  
  
I've loved many women in my life. My daughter, Lexi, the most wonderful child in the   
world. And that's not just the proud father in me talking. She's the reason I'm still on this   
damn planet.  
  
My mother, the woman who abandoned my dad and me when I was six, and who came   
back for my Dad's funeral a few years ago. She tried to make amends that day, but I'd   
finally gotten over her leaving. I didn't need her anymore, as sad as that sounds.  
  
Amy DeLuca Valenti, the woman who mended my father's broken heart and treated me like   
the son she never had but swore she always wanted. The woman who became my mother,   
over time, not by biology, but by love.  
  
Maria Guerin, my sister, and my friend. Liz Parker-Evans, the first girl I thought I loved.  
  
Isabel Evans Valenti. My wife, my best friend, the mother of my child, my partner in misery.   
Except she's not miserable anymore. She's happy, with Alex. She's finally at peace.  
  
And Tess Harding. The first girl I really loved. Max told me once, that drunken Valentine's   
night, that he saw into Liz Parker's soul. I saw into Tess Harding's. And I saw that no   
matter how much I loved her, I wasn't what she wanted, what she needed. She wanted her   
destiny, she wanted to be queen. She wanted someone else more than she wanted me. So   
I did what I thought was best, what I thought you're supposed to do for the girl you loved.   
It seemed so much easier, so much more romantic in the movies and on television. I'm the   
living proof that it's not romantic or easy. It's hell on earth. I know; I lived through it. I   
told myself I loved her too much to hold her back and I let her go, and I've regretted it   
every day, every hour, every minute of it. That night at the prom…I never thought my life   
would turn out like this. Empty and lonely and full of regrets.  
  
I know now, I should've held her tight and weathered the bad times with her. Maybe then,   
none of this would've happened.  
  
//Camera one closes in  
The soundtrack starts, the scene begins//  
  
It's finally my time. My daughter is grown up and married with children and even a   
grandchild of her own, and she doesn't need me anymore.   
  
But other people do need me. I can feel them, Alex, Isabel…and Tess, waiting for me. It's   
time for me to go to them, to find the happiness that we were all denied in this life.  
  
It's my time. I'm nearly eighty years old, and I've lived too damn long.   
  
It's time to stop acting the part and start living it.  
  
//You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
You're playing you now  
Take a bow  
Take a bow  
Take a bow  
Take a bow//  
  



End file.
